Essays on literary and theological themes

June 22, 2006

To the Chairman of ICEL

AN
OPEN LETTER TO BISHOP ROCHE, CHAIRMAN OF ICEL

Dear
Bishop Arthur Roche,

I should like to comment on your address of
June 15, 2006, to the American Bishops.

THE
GRAVITY OF THE PROBLEM

I have
spoken to countless Irish Catholics who have given up on the liturgy because of
its flatness and dullness and its lack of theological perspicuity. Some have
found spiritual refreshment in the Anglican Church. Others send their kids to
church, knowing the kids will get ‘zilch’ there, but hoping it will be good discipline.

Soulless and sloppy liturgy has done more to
undermine faith in recent decades than the combined labors of Voltaire, Nietzsche
and all their cohorts.

Bad
preaching, lack of scriptural culture, failure to encourage lay participation,
including in the realm of music and art, routinization, and above all soulless
language are undermining the vitality of Christian communities, especially in
the Roman Catholic world.

You say
you thought that translating the liturgy would be ‘a reasonably straight-forward
task.’ This suggests that you are not fully aware of the grievous damage done
to the church by the flat, sloppy liturgical translations of the last 35 years.

It suggests that you do not understand the
effort and inspiration needed to compose beautiful prose, prose that will
endure the wear and tear of decades of daily use, prose that will serve as a
vehicle for contemplation. ‘We must labour to be beautiful,’ said Yeats. Have
any of the authors of the new ICEL translation gazed in admiration and envy at
a page of perfect prose?

You may say that this is an esoteric concern
and that the faithful are contented with functional prose as they are happy
with mediocre music. The result of such an attitude is the sapping of the faith
itself.

MAGICAL
THINKING

I suspect that a lot of magical thinking is
going on in Vatican circles. They thought that hurtling pellets of Scripture at
the faithful would create a scriptural culture in Catholicism, and must be good
for the faithful
in any case. Now they think that literal translation from the Latin will
magically render the English liturgy dignified and beautiful.

This magical thinking is shown in the idea
that the authorship of liturgical texts is best accomplished by Bishops, acting
in a spirit of prayer and trust (in the words of Liturgiam Authenticam). Bishops are not necessarily skilled
writers, nor are they often scholars. Can you tell us who actually composed the
new translations? Did they read them aloud before a discerning audience so that
any awkward, false or hollow part could be detected? Did the Bishops involved
think of drawing on the work of qualified poets and writers, in accord with
Vatican II's teaching that ‘the art of our times must be given free scope in
the Church.’

‘In using a translation that is more faithful
to Sacred Scripture we are teaching ourselves and our people to speak bible! Lex orandi, lex credendi.’ You cannot
speak bible without years of practice. This is like someone strewing their speech
with mispronounced and out-of-context French phrases, a la George Bush, and
then having the illusion that he is speaking French and helping others to do
so.

I suggest that we need the humility to
consult the Anglican and Protestant churches whose biblical culture and
sensitivity infinitely outstrips our own, as to how to use Scripture in such
manner as to enrich, deepen and clarify the liturgical action.

AN
UNTRIED THEORY OF TRANSLATION

You say that the English translation must
have literal accuracy because it is to be used by many translators who do not
know Latin well enough to translate directly from the Latin. Now, what is so
important about translating Latin texts, many of them of recent vintage in any
case? If someone needs an English crib to translate a Latin text he or she
should not be translating it at all. If knowledge of Latin is as scanty as your
anecdotes suggest then the retention of the Latin as the Ur-text of the liturgy
becomes problematic.

‘Faithfulness in translation’ is a difficult
idea. The Italian adage, traduttore
traditore, works both ways. An excessively literal translation can be
unfaithful as much as a loose one. That is why someone who does not know Latin
well cannot translate faithfully from the Latin, even if he has an English
crib.

‘Its stipulations differ markedly from those
of the earlier document known as Comme le
prévoit. That was issued in 1969 by the Consilium with the responsibility
for putting into effect the Council’s Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium.’ The basic norms of translation have been
altered, leading to resignation of the old ICEL in 2002. Frankly, many things
differ markedly between what the Vatican today does and says and what the
Vatican of the 1960s did and said. Some leading church historians have claimed
that this is because a spirit of Vaticanism has replaced, or betrayed, Vatican
II.

Liturgiam
Authenticam was a quite controverted document. Is it wise to give it such
overriding authority in taking a step whose consequences will last for decades?
There is even a disturbing of strong-arm tactics in the way the new
translations have been imposed on the US Bishops.

PSEUDO-POETRY

You point to the phrase ‘from the rising to
the setting of the sun’ and say ‘we have produced a richer and more evocative
version, bringing to the mind of the worshipper the beauties of the sunrise and
sunset and the closeness of these texts to Sacred Scripture.’ But a poetic
prophetical text is not necessarily what one needs for everyday recitation. I
find ‘from the rising to the setting of the sun’ an over-heavy adornment of the
mass-text for daily use.

Merely to repeat in 2006 a semitism such as ‘fruit
of the vine,’ already used in the Offertory in any case, is not to convey the
deliciousness of wine, as you claim. In any case the deliciousness of wine has
no bearing on the function of the words in the context of the consecration. To
speak of ‘powerful salvific resonance because of the symbolic value accorded to
the vine plant and the vineyard in scripture, as recalled by Jesus’ elaboration
in John 15 of the image of Himself as the true vine’ is a red-herring. And if
one wishes to remind the faithful of John 15 (which is distracting in any case
in the context of the words of consecration), this is not the way to do it.
Such vague, sloppy and promiscuous allusion cheapens the biblical text.

An amazing rigmarole about biblical
references to dew cannot justify the contested phrase ‘make holy these gifts,
we pray, by the dew of your Spirit,’ which introduces distracting associations
at one of the most solemn moments in the Church’s worship. (The US Bishops have
wisely asked for ‘dew’ to be replaced with ‘outpouring’ as in the Italian ‘effusione’; but will Rome accept this
commonsense proposal?)

‘But surely, dew still exists. I noticed an
advert on the street yesterday for a drink called Mountain Dew!’ This kind of
fatuous remark could sound as if you were mocking the people of God.

‘If we are not to be scorched and made
unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an
Advocate as well.’ But no one is objecting to dew. The objection is to speaking
of the epiclesis in terms of dew. If one speaks of the dew of the Spirit one
speaks of it as refreshing the heart, a quite different context. You might say,
to be obtuse, that ‘in the beginning, the dew of the Spirit was upon the waters’
would be an acceptable paraphrase of Gen 1.1-2 by your reasoning.

One ICEL statement suggested that if people
did not like ‘dew’ they could say ‘dewfall’ instead: ‘Conferences that do not
wish to adopt “dew” may wish to consider “dewfall” as an alternative.’ Forgive
me if I find this somewhat reminiscent of the famous statement attributed to
Marie Antoinette: ‘Let them eat cake!’

This kind of pseudo-poetic reasoning is that
of an amateur who has just signed on for Poetry 101.

The same remarks apply to the ungainly
expression ‘serene and kindly gaze.’ ICEL noted of ‘gaze’ that ‘some have
expressed doubts about the use of this word’ but that after its ‘frequent’
presence in the English translation of Pope Benedict XVI's Lenten message
earlier this year, the word ‘seems... to have enhanced its status within
Christian vocabulary.’ What kind of sycophantism is this? If a pope uses a word
it then becomes desirable for liturgical use? And again I note the atomistic
focus on single words rather than on context and overall intelligibility.

PLEONASM
AND FLATNESS

Soulless flatness has been the hallmark of
ICEL translations. I see signs that the new translations will have the same
quality.

You find exemplary the prayer, ‘Stir up your
power, O Lord, and come to our aid with mighty strength...’ But ‘mighty
strength’ is a pleonasm, a stylistic fault. No poet would be found dead using
it. Why not say ‘with mighty might’ or ‘with strongest strength’ while one is
at it? The fact that ICEL presents this weak language as exemplary again
undermines confidence in their qualifications for their task.

Another text you single out has the phrase ‘grant
us the help of your compassion...’ Again this is pleonastic and odd. (‘Sir,
could you kindly grant me the help of your compassion?’), as are ‘graciously
grant’ and ‘sustained by the help of your mercy,’ etc.

What is needed is a real text, a text with
unity, rhythm, persuasive impact, not a string of broken flat sentences such as
the current Eucharistic Prayers offer. There is no sign that ICEL thinks in
terms of such rich unified rhythmical eloquent texts (even the Roman Canon lost
much of its luster in the dull translation). Rather we have a fuddy-duddy
fussing about fetishized Latin phrases.

If what we have seen, or been allowed to see,
of the Eucharistic Prayers is so full of dubious English, what must be the case
with the Collects, Secrets, Prefaces and Post-Communions? Who ever looks at
these pieces of linguistic and spiritual sawdust, so expensively printed in our
Missals? Who ever asks for feedback about their value? Why not allow a period
of testing, so that the people of God can give their response to these texts?

You will reply, perhaps, that such openness
to correction would militate against the ideal of having the whole
English-speaking world pray in one voice, following a Roman basis. This, you
claim, will be a marvelous demonstration of Catholic unity. I see rather a
display of uniformity without conviction, and I predict that it will cause
nothing but further malaise and embarrassment throughout our paralyzed,
silenced Church.

Comments

Dear Fr. O'Leary:

Thank you for this open letter to the Chairman of ICEL. I believe that four of the five arguments which you present in it are entirely spot on, and while I would have a bit of a quibble with #2 (as regards the supposed need for a "literal" translation--I believe it far more necessary to obtain a "faithful" translation), I believe that I am in substantial agreement with your underlying point: the importance of having an English Liturgy which (in the immortal words of Beevis and Butthead) does not suck.

As regards your point concerning magical thinking and Biblical literacy, I think the problem in that case is less ICEL's texts, and more those of the pedestrian quality of New American Bible. Perhaps that problem could be corrected by dumping the NAB and adopting the RSV in its place. I'm sure that the RSV's cause would be improved by the fact that the text is in the public domain; adoption of the latter would at least not cost the bishops much more than a loss of face.

One essential problem of any RC English translation is that the American Bishops and the ICEL are currently addicted to translation by committee. The resulting camels have been rather difficult to swallow. I think that Pope St. Damasus had the right idea by having one translator of the Vulgate, as has the current Ecumenical Patriarch in having Archimandrite Ephrem Lash as the sole translator of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom into English.

While we have had our disputes in Pontifications if it would mean anything to you, I would much prefer someone of your linguistic, theological, and literary skills and sensibilities as the sole translator of the current Missa. I think you would and could do a much better, and much more faithful, job of translation.

Dear Bernard Brandt,
Thanks for your comment. I sent this letter to the National Catholic Reporter, since no one reads it here.
You see, what I thought anyone should be able to see, that translating a liturgy involves the task of prose composition, and that the resulting text must be a beautiful one that will wear well with use.
Now, "we must labour to be beautiful" (Yeats). Enduring prose is not "a relatively straightforward matter" as the bureaucratic bishop Roche imagined. To put the composition of a liturgy in the hands of bureaucrats, people who have never paused in admiration and envy before a page of perfect prose, is a crime.
On faithfulness, I think it is an extra, rather than the essential -- having a worthy usable text, a vehicle for contemplation, is what is essential.
Now the Vatican has turned into an Inquisition -- the Pope, the Secretary of State, and the leaders of the CDF, Council for the Family, and Congregation for Catholic Education seem all to give the bulk of their attention to the defence of orthodoxy. Meanwhile other pastoral roles of the Church are direly neglected. We are seeing this in the ICEL fiasco -- it is being rushed through and imposed by strong-arm tactics in the name of orthodoxy and in response, no doubt, to cranks who see the present text as full of heresy. The panacea for everything is yet more dotting of the "i"s of orthodoxy"!
Nothing could be more myopic or counter-productive.
Imagine, "consubstantial" is being re-imposed (in all probability) as if the word itself had a magical communicative power. It is a notoriously murky word and there is no agreement among scholars as to what Nicea actually intended by it (no doubt it was the product of a committee) nor as to how it is interpreted in its various uses when it became current in Christian language from the Cappadocians on.
There seems to be an awful lot of this contextless atomized translation in the new ICEL texts.
I would be glad to take on the task of translating the liturgy -- but I would never imagine it to be a straightforward task. It would take at least five years of intensive creative work. Every text would have to be recited out loud before a discriminating audience, with an ear for hollowness and false notes. The present set of collects, sectets and postcommunions is a monument of hollow, shallow, vacuous language, shameful in that it mimes prayer without the least show of conviction.
Of course these bishops will laugh off concerns with aesthetic quality, something they think the faithful do not need. They fob off the people of God with shoddy language, shoddy music, unprepared and undernourished sermons and shabby routinized gesturing that has not the dignity of authentic liturgical action. They mock God himself who asks to be worshipped in the beauty of holiness.
Why does not one complain? Partly because we do not expect any better, and partly because we know it is useless to try to catch the ear of our somnabulistic hierarchical church; and even if you catch the ear of a few bishops or cardinals they will tell you "we are powerless" -- as to the Curia, bishops themselves flee this "bureaucracy of nothing" as the plague!

The majority of bishops are calling for “the mainstream liturgical community in the United States” to be the cheerleader and catalyst for implementing the new Order of the Mass (NCR, June 30). I am both chagrined and confused by such a request. Most of the bishops have never requested the comments of the mainstream liturgical community on the final draft voted on this past June, let alone sought input from clergy and laity alike who would proclaim, respond, and listen to the new texts. Thankfully, the bishop of my diocese did make such a request, inviting comments from the laity and the ordained, from those with degrees in liturgical studies to others without formal training in liturgy. The overwhelming majority found that the texts were unproclaimable, unremarkable, and by-and-large unredeemable.

I hope the 173 bishops who approved the new Order will personally go out and teach their priests, religious and faithful its merits as well as how to implement it on the local level. Since most bishops wanted to “go it alone” in approving the text, perhaps they should do the same in explaining to their parishioners how the prayers and responses will help the faithful to worship better as well as better understand the theology they intend to convey. Furthermore, many of those bishops will be at a loss when seeking help to implement these changes since offices of worship have been eliminated in a host of dioceses. I will assist Bishop Robert Lynch in implementing this new text, though I will be at a loss when it comes to explaining why this text is better.

If a certain sector of the church can petition to “celebrate” the Mass of Pius V because of its intimate connection to the sustenance of their faith life, perhaps our generation can make a similar request to use the Mass of Paul VI on a regular basis. This is the Mass I cut my teeth on, was ordained in, and have used in serving the church for the past 22 years.

In your reply to Fr O'Leary you say that I was the sole translator of the translation of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom commended by the Ecumenical Patriarch. This is not quite accurate. There was a translation committee, whose names are listed in the book. The donkey work was done by me and then discussed in committee. This meant that people only raised in discussion the particular bees in their mitres or klobuks. In that sense the translation is mine, as Bishop Kallistos was gracious enough to say at a meeting of the Friends of Mt Athos. I am flattered at being linked with St Jerome; I am certainly equally bad-tempered.

While I thank the Very Reverend Father Ephrem for his correction, I must quibble with his characterization of his excellent translation as "donkey work". At the risk of making a donkey of myself, or of unduly flattering the Very Reverend Father, I would contend that this would perhaps be the case only if one were to say the same of the prophetic role of Balaam's ass, or of the Christophoric role of the donkey at our Lord Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm or Willow Sunday.